


Underneath Electric Lights

by holtzghostgirl



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff, Ghostbusters AU, Janitor!Holtzmann, Patty and Abby will be making appearances shortly so stay tuned, Slow Burn, Teacher!Erin, and kevin, etc - Freeform, idiots falling in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 04:29:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7786846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holtzghostgirl/pseuds/holtzghostgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU in which Erin is a physics teacher at a high school and Holtz is the eccentric janitor, who just so happens to be a genius engineer going through a rough patch. They run into eachother most days, because Erin always stays late at work and Holtzmann’s shift starts after her last class is over. For some reason, Erin starts finding reasons to stay later and later in her classroom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Underneath Electric Lights

**Author's Note:**

> This work will be posted in two parts (or potentially three depending on how many words I end up writing). Here is the first, I became obsessed with the idea of this AU a while back and I hope you enjoy it! Please leave any feedback/suggestions you have in the comments, I love to read them.

Erin Gilbert had been teaching physics at Hook High for five years, but apparently not long enough to learn one significant lesson herself: nobody listened to anything after the bell rang in last period.

“Alright everybody, so your next test is on Tuesday remember to study your handouts well, and drop me an e-mail if you have any concerns. I’ll be waiting at my computer… all night!” the teacher laughed, and there was a slight giddy strain to the sound due to a lack of sleep. She tiredly watched on as her tenth graders savagely climbed over one another other towards the doorway, and their impending freedom. 

On Tuesday, there would be at least three students who would claim that the test was news to them. Regular as clockwork. She slouched back in her seat with a slow exhale and eyed the remaining large pile of papers still needing to be marked, as if they were there purely to spite her. She loved her job but she was feeling the stress of assessment season, her hatred for it almost enough to rival that of her students’.

Erin decided to stay at work late again, just as she had all four days previous. It was easier to get things done in the peaceful environment of her lab. The desk alone much larger than the table in her modest apartment. She liked to spread out all her work so that she could get a good overview of what needed to be done, a sense of control. At least, in the high school building she had the obnoxious yellow glare of the lights to ensure she wouldn’t fall asleep while she did it. An unfortunate occurrence that had become more and more frequent in recent weeks. 

The teacher just needed to grab another healthy dose of caffeine from the staffroom, strongly craving it at that stage of the day like any true addict with their drug of choice. Then, she’d settle in for a couple hours and fire through those damn papers. 

Roll on summer break, she thought, at least by then she might be able to have a good night’s rest.

…

Holtzmann’s first shift started thirty minutes after the school day ended. She was not nervous, as such, but it would be a lie to claim she was feeling pleased by her scenario. Having graduated from one of the country’s top colleges for engineering, even she wondered how she had ended up starting work as a janitor. 

She wondered, with morbid amusement, if MIT would put her in their graduate employment reports. Now that would be funny.  
Embracing her new large crinkly brown overalls (sexy) and exclusive use of a janitor’s closet, she had decided to take on the roll like the method actress she was not. Already inventing a mental backstory for herself that was mildly less depressing, and much more imaginative. There was something to be said for blind cheerfulness and humour in the face of a bad day. Holtzmann would know.

The first room on Holtzmann’s list was number 104, a physics lab, and she found herself feeling glad that she was starting so close to home. The physics lab back in her old high-school was the location of some of her happiest memories, it had been a sanctuary during a time that had certainly not been easy for her. It seemed more than a little ironic that she was back in such a similar environment now.

Holtzmann took a moment to drink in her surroundings, the smell of Bunsen burners lingering comfortingly in the air. Familiar electrical units and equipment were scattered around the room. She was tempted to go and look through all of it, but strategically refrained. Getting fired on her first day would be a new record, even by her standards.

The new janitor had brought along a small bashed up stereo, thinking of it as something to help pass time --and technically she was yet to be told it wasn’t allowed. Furthermore, there was no one in the room, so she wasn’t too concerned either way. 

Holtzmann had always had this ritual in the labs that whenever she worked she would play music in the background, often dancing when the moment took her. 

It was a way to entertain herself whilst also maintaining some focus, encouraging her creative mind to stretch itself as far as possible. 80s anthems were her favourites because they were typically bold and dancey, and people usually found them lame. But occasionally they could also be unexpectedly awesome.

Holtzmann hit play right before she took the mop from her new cart and started to clean. Almost immediately bopping along to the opening beat of ‘Rhythm of the Night’ by DeBarge. 

It was one of her all-time favourite songs, and it wasn’t long until she began unselfconsciously dancing around with her mop as she cleaned. Quickly cheering herself up with the infectious tune, and enthusiastically miming the lyrics she knew all too well:  
‘Well, I know a place where we can dance all night away  
Underneath electric stars  
Just come with me and we can shake your blues right away  
You'll be doing fine when the music starts, oh.’

Holtzmann span back around dramatically with her mop microphone, ready to really perform for the first big chorus. A crucial part of the song. Instead, she froze up in surprise at the unexpected audience of one standing in the doorway.

There was a woman with the tiniest bowtie she had ever seen in her life, clutching a cup of coffee as if it was a life raft and wearing a wide eyed owlish expression that meant she probably hadn’t expected to be met with another person either. Particularly not a dancing one.

Holtzmann was luckily still close enough to reach the stereo and hit the square stop button. Feigning composure, she leaned an arm casually against it, slackening her posture to such a ridiculous degree that it was reminiscent of a caricature ‘bad boy’ in a corny high school movie.   
“Come here often?”

Erin blinked in disbelief. She nodded.  
“Yes, yes this is my classroom. So I do come here, pretty much every day actually,” She replied, frowning as she took in the eccentric appearance of the woman before her, all yellow circular glasses, fingerless gloves, wild blonde hair and large brown overalls, ‘I’m sorry who, ah, who are you?’

“Holtzmann.” The new janitor grinned widely so that almost all her teeth were on display, fully aware that she probably came across as totally insane but beyond caring. She strode forward and thrust her hand out to shake. She’d been a weirdo her whole life, at least she was consistent.

Erin took her hand in slight disbelief, pausing for a moment before she introduced herself. “I’m Erin… Are you new here?”

“Aha, yes. I am. You got me,” Holtzmann raised her hands as if she had been caught out (and she had, just not for that), “first day on the job.”

The physics teacher smiled and nodded again in a way that both polite and reasonably dismissive, as she made to get back towards her marking. She really didn’t have too much time to spare for chit chat, only hoping that the stereo stayed off whilst she tried to work. Erin was not one to stray from a schedule.

“Ok well, I usually stay late so you’ll probably see me around. Do you wor—’” As the teacher spoke her kitten heeled shoes completely lost their grip on a wet patch of ground, she veered backwards with a look of pure fear on her face. Just as any good high school movie bad boy would, the janitor realised Erin was falling just in time to catch her.

However, Holtzmann was not fast enough to stop hot coffee splashing up her blouse. She hurriedly helped the deeply mortified science teacher to the nearest desk, before clumsily rummaging through her cart for paper towels. Nervous hands uncooperative in her urgency.

“I am so incredibly sorry,” she said, dabbing awkwardly at the other woman’s chest with wads of towels, both of them growing increasingly flustered, “oh jeez, honestly I forgot to put up the sign and… I screwed up. That was my bad”. This was probably not the impression Holtzmann needed to be making. In fact, this was exactly why she’d been kicked out of the last research project. She felt like an utter moron. “Ah man, your tiny bow tie is ruined!”, she noted with a half-genuine wail of despair.

“It’s not a bow tie,” Erin mumbled bashfully, unable to resist making the correction despite her own distress, “it came with the blouse.” In actual fact, she really wasn’t too badly hurt. The hot liquid had been a shock to her skin but it wasn’t scalding, and she doubted it would leave a burn.

She took the paper towels from the new janitor’s hands, more embarrassed than anything else, and dabbed at the stains herself. Preferring that the situation didn’t get any more uncomfortable than it already was.  
“I’m fine,” the teacher insisted, reassuringly, trying to gather the shreds of her dignity, as she attempted to fix her bangs back in place, “please, I should have been looking where I was going. I could see you had the mop when you were… dancing with it.”

She looked down at her shirt, the cream fabric stained with large dark brown splotches, and smelling like an espresso maker, a complete and utter mess. Then she glanced back up at the obviously freaked out janitor, whose hair had seemingly grown even wilder with stress, her eyes blinking excessively behind the round frames of her glasses, and Erin remembered the way she had been dancing when she walked in.

Erin couldn’t help herself, she snorted and then the snorting turned into a fit of uncontrolled dorky giggles. After some brief concern and then confusion, Holtzmann was so relieved by the teacher’s sense of humour that she started to laugh too. 

Once Erin eventually managed to stop giggling, she began slowly making her way back to her chair, so careful with her steps this time that she would probably only just beat a snail in a close race. Occasionally breaking into quiet chuckles again at how ridiculous this day was.

“Nice place ya got here,” Holtzmann dropped in conversationally, much calmer and reasonably assured that she wasn’t about to be fired now. The ice had absolutely been broken between them. She picked up her mop again (ensuring it wasn’t too wet this time) to finish where she had left off, “I always appreciate a good lab.”

“You’re a scientist too?” Erin asked, feeling a pang of curiosity sober her up, as she made it back into her seat, only slightly scathed. She looked at the janitor’s glasses yet again, they definitely looked more like lab goggles to her.

“Oh yeah, science is, like, my entire life,” Holtzmann replied in a fairly offhand way, not quite meeting the teacher’s eyes as she failed to add that she was a fully qualified scientist herself. It almost felt better not to admit that given her current status, something had clearly gone very wrong. “It was always my favourite class.”

She put away the mop and began wiping down the surfaces with a cloth and a spray that smelled strongly of artificial astringent lemon. Now highly focused on her job, as she tried to scrape off some scorch marks on a desk, narrowing her eyes in concentration.

Erin experienced a second flash of curiosity at that remark. Surely someone who claimed science was their ‘entire life’ had more to do with it than just liking it in school. Particularly, someone wearing what looked to her like lab glasses. She opted not to press the matter though, aware that they had only just met. It was hardly any of Erin’s business, but it didn’t stop her immediate wonder.  
“Mine too. Obviously.”

The brief conversation between them lulled then, and Erin picked out the first of her many papers. Red pen poised. Holtzmann started softly humming the rest of the song from earlier, and it was peaceful enough not to be too distracting. There was an easiness to the peace, that made them both feel comfortable. 

“Hey, can we just, start again tomorrow, maybe –write this one off?” Erin asked sheepishly, a few minutes later, as Holtzmann was clearly finishing up with the room and getting ready to move on, “I don’t want you to know me as the teacher who fell over.” 

The janitor chuckled at that, it was a light and easy laugh that Erin found oddly engaging. Actually, a lot of things about the new janitor were quite engaging. She would find herself thinking of her whilst she made breakfast the next morning.

In turn, Holtzmann had allowed herself to observe the teacher properly for a moment before she left. There was something about her, she couldn’t put her finger on it, maybe it was the tiny bow tie, the impractical kitten heels, the way she snorted when she laughed --or maybe she was just biased towards physics teachers. She’d always had a thing for people who loved to share their knowledge. 

“If you insist,” she agreed, “but I’m cool with you knowing me as the janitor who dances. That is a legacy I will willingly accept and live up to.” She winked, playfully, as she turned her cart to leave. 

Erin watched her as she left the classroom, her lips pressed together in a curiously entertained smile and the subtle hint of a flush on her cheeks. 

Perhaps, this job wouldn’t be so bad after all.

…

Alright, so maybe the janitor wasn’t always as subtle and ‘cool’ as she thought she was. The next day Holtzmann purposely arrived back to work earlier than necessary, having already made a totally unnecessary trip into town. She was armed with a takeout cup of black coffee and two sugar packets. She did not have 104 on her list but she headed there first anyway.

The janitor made it quietly to the front of the room, and placed the cup and sugar down carefully on the desk. Satisfied not to be noticed, she was trying her best not to disturb the teacher who was ploughing her way through yet another stack of papers. Her nose scrunched slightly as she focused.

It was a friendly gesture, Holtzmann told herself. She had simply noted the way Erin had looked so disappointed by the loss of her spilled beverage a day before. 

It took a moment before the teacher noticed the offering, having been too caught up to do so before. Erin glanced across the room just in time to see the other woman walking away.  
“What is this?” she called after her, flattered and surprised by the gesture all at once.

“Coffee,” Holtzmann replied without stopping, rolling her eyes as she glanced back from the doorway for a second to add, “duuh.” It was a simple repayment, for the incident yesterday, nothing more. 

And before Erin could process that exchange, or thank her, that mop of curly blonde hair was long out of sight. She briefly inspected the coffee, as if it was something alien to her, and then decided that today it would be alright to accept this gift without questioning it. Coffee was one of her few vices

The teacher added just one sugar pack to her cup to tame the bitter edge, before she drew it to her lips. She took a slow lengthy sip. The rich aroma hitting her before the taste did, it was heady and intense. But perfect, a smooth dark roast from a proper coffee machine, complex and toasted. Not a thing like the acidic instant stuff from the staffroom that she typically drank. Erin savoured the taste for a moment appreciatively, shutting her eyes with a quiet hum of approval.

The new janitor had good taste. She would unexpectedly find herself thinking about her again when she woke up the next morning.

…

Over the course of her next few shifts, Holtzmann found herself falling into the routine of bringing the teacher coffee at the start. Never once thinking to buy one for herself. Quite obviously beginning to harbour a fondness for the other woman, that she couldn’t quite kick off. A desire to care for the clearly overworked teacher in small ways.

She also loved the days in which she got to clean Erin’s lab. Chattering away whilst she mopped and cleaned, taking her time. It was pleasantly nostalgic to talk about the students’ science fair projects and SAT questions. Occasionally reminiscing on a few of her own brilliant creations, to the teacher’s delight. It reminded Holtzmann of a time long before she had waded out of her own depth. 

Erin was now on her longest ever streak of staying late at school. The key difference being that now she wasn’t yearning to go home so much. Instead, she found herself keen to see her new after-hours companion on a daily basis. It was weird and different to anyway she had felt for a person before, but she always found herself thoroughly engaged by their discussions. Intrigued by the manner in which Holtzmann conducted herself, and the way she was apparently confident and shy, smooth and awkward, all at once.

One afternoon, the teacher had walked past one of Holtzmann’s rooms and paused at the familiar rhythmic thumping of her stereo. She had found herself drawn to watch the other woman, just for a moment from the doorway. The way the janitor shook her hips and goofily danced around was just so entirely unique to her, and she somehow pulled it all off. The brief sight made Erin’s pulse race just that tiny bit faster and her hands sweat, and at that she swiftly returned to the safety of her own lab.

Erin had insisted that Holtzmann should stop bringing her coffees, clearly unsure of how to handle so much attention. So she continued to do so with even more enthusiasm, like a puppy dog all too eager for affection. 

She liked the way those steady blue eyes appraised her curiously from over the cup. The way the teacher always seemed to savour her sips. Particularly the first. Life could be bleak enough as it was, why deny herself such simple pleasures?

Holtzmann had almost forgotten the way women had once made her feel, distracted by a love for all things nuclear in the more recent years of her life. She had forgotten the way a fine figure could radiate a certain kind of energy that her projects could not. It gave her a heady, pure, kind of rush.

But she was also smart enough to know, that unlike her projects, she could not to allow this to blow up in her face. That she was probably safe in her assumption that Erin was 99.9% straight anyway, no matter how much of her finest flirtation she was subjected to. Moreover, Holtzmann reasoned, the teacher was light-years away from a washed up engineer like herself.

It was a pure scientific fascination. The janitor had rarely been so keen on maintaining her proximity to another person before, and that was the most logical explanation she could summon for such an anomalous occurrence. There was no harm in a little awkward or teasing flirtation to pass time at work, and it was all safe if she drew the line there.

…

The janitor had been spending her twenty-minute mid-shift breaks in the physics lab for some time now, never once having asked permission to do so, but just assuming it was fine anyway. To be fair, Erin had offered no objection.

“Alright, but I’m just arguing that ghosts could exist on some kind of magnetised separate plane.” Erin laughed a little as she persistently tried to explain what she was aware was a self-indulgent and slightly crazy theory, during a heated break time debate about the supernatural.

“I mean, we know that other dimensions almost certainly exist and all those millions of people who claim to see ghosts can’t all be lying, right? My best friend Abby and I were super into that stuff back in high school.” 

As Holtzmann listened, she began to realize that this stuff wasn’t routinely told. These were parts of Erin one had to earn, she could feel a wall coming down.  
“I can tell,” the janitor chuckled, amused and endeared by the usually highly professional physics teacher’s unexpected rant, “I’ve never seen this side to you before… Maybe we should talk about this stuff some more. Ghost girl.”

Erin smirked at the name, she’d been given it a few times in high school but from her she didn’t seem to mind it half as much. 

Holtzmann wondered whether many others had made it that far. Which is why Erin’s next words changed lots of things for her:  
“I’ve never told anybody about all that stuff before, not since high school.”

There was something about the janitor that took Erin back to a time where science wasn’t just her job. Where she and her best friend would spend hours theorising and nerding out about physics, for fun. It had been a long time since she’d even thought about those things.

“I guess I’m not just anybody.” The janitor said, and she didn’t need to look to know about the familiar blush creeping across the teacher's cheeks.

…

 

It was ludicrous because here she was, the kind of teacher who put lab partners together with their crushes, because teenagers were never subtle with these things and she thought it was sweet. Unable to identify her own responses to this situation. She was a grown woman, who was blushing because another grown woman wanted to spend time with her to talk about her secret nerdy fascination with ghosts.

Erin had never received so much attention in her life. The past weeks alone almost compensating for the general lack of it during her college years. It left her perpetually flustered and flattered and confused. Convincing herself, somehow that the other woman wasn’t hitting on her. But also simultaneously curious about what it might mean if she were.

And maybe it was screwed up, that Holtzmann was so fascinated by Erin. As the days, and weeks passed by. Noting how she had a tiny bow tie for each day of the week and a blush for every coffee, wink and grin. The way she looked up from underneath her bangs, and scrunched her nose when she focused. Kitten heels through rain or shine. 

A compulsive need to keep everything just so, and a terrible habit of making really bad dorky jokes when she felt awkward. All wrapped up by an obvious dedication and love for her work. Holtzmann had this intrinsic urge to study the teacher, like one of her former projects. She wanted to know all she could. It was an excellent distraction from reality. 

It also meant that Holtzmann was almost always able to stay out of the spotlight herself. At least, not for much longer than it took to come up with some witty or flirtatious quip to switch it right back again, and that suited her just fine at that point in her life.

“Doctor Gilbert?” Holtzmann read aloud from an envelope left on Erin’s desk one day during break. Curious that such a thing had never come up before. Her legs propped up comfortably against the desk. She was easily at home in the physics lab.

“Oh, yeah, I got my PhD at MIT,” the teacher replied distractedly, half her attention still dedicated to a lesson plan she was drawing up, “I’m sort of hoping to go back into research at some point. I mean, I love teaching, I always wanted to teach –but the dream is to lecture I think. It’s really the best of both worlds.”

The janitor nodded, as she ate another messy handful of salted Pringles from the tube under her arm. She laughed dryly, clearly mid-thought. Too relaxed to do much but blurt it out, she had apparently stopped censoring herself so much around Erin.   
“Imagine if we’d bumped into each other on campus, you woulda hated my guts, I guarantee. The physics PhD students always looked so sour whenever I walked in the room. I guess I had a reputation for leavin’ the labs a little worse for wear…”

Erin put her pen down and looked directly at Holtzmann, who didn’t seem to notice until she spoke.  
“You went to MIT?” She asked, eyebrows raising slightly in surprise. The janitor froze mid-Pringle as the weight of her error finally dawned on her. 

“No.” She protested, unconvincingly, like a toddler caught stealing cookies from the jar, “I just meant like… imagine if I had been there,” her ears burning up with embarrassment. 

Erin shook her head, refusing to take that excuse. She’d been more attentive than Holtzmann realised, and over their last few encounters she had been subtly dropping increasingly complicated topics into their usual conversations. Already having realised that the woman was much smarter than she let on.

The janitor had always been suspiciously knowledgeable, for someone who claimed they merely ‘tinkered a little with some stuff’ in their free time. They consistently managed to have good compelling conversations about anything, ranging from the basics like Einstein’s theory of relativity to some of the most up and coming material in the field and debates about ghosts. They were almost always better discussions than those shared between Erin and her colleagues. 

She had known there was more to the other woman from day one, and now she had her proof. The teacher had been waiting for the moment where she could unearth something like this, having desperately wanted to know more about the elusive janitor for some time.  
“So, if I search for Jillian Holtzmann under the alumni section of the MIT website, your photo won’t crop up at all?” she asked, overly-confident because she knew she was right, arms folded. Fully-engaged in teacher mode.

The janitor felt caught out and exposed. Unusually, it was she who wore the flushed cheeks on this occasion, whilst staring at a spot on the wall that was suddenly incredibly interesting.   
“How did you know my first name?” She asked defensively, suddenly looking back at Erin after a moment of painfully stretched silence, “I’m pretty sure I never told you it.”

The scenario was becoming palpably intense. It was Erin’s turn to blush now, and the status quo was restored(ish).  
“I saw it on the janitor list, in the staffroom,” she confessed, not adding that she had originally checked it for that very purpose. As always, unable to just let something nagging at her be. However, she had not expected her assumption of the janitor’s intelligence would receive such a negative response.

Here was the first ever real discord between them, rearing its ugly head over an otherwise ordinary afternoon. Erin’s eyes were embarrassed, oozing sympathy over something she didn’t even understand, and everything else Holtzmann couldn’t stand to see in the eyes of someone looking at her. Particularly not when that someone was Erin. 

Whatever the fragile arrangement they had between them was, it seemed to be crumbling down now.

Fuck. Holtzmann was tired of Goddamn teachers sticking their oar in when they had no need to. She’d never even be in this mess if Doctor Gorin hadn’t been obsessed with making her into some kind of personal cultivation project back in college. A long bottled up frustration swelled and burst in her chest.

Holtzmann did not belong in the world of academia, had never been raised for it, and sure she might have been smart enough but she stuck out like a sore thumb in those environments. A fire in a laboratory. She’d been put out one too many times and now even fate itself seemed to have other plans for her. This was exactly why she didn’t want Erin to know about her crappy degree and start getting ideas about her.

Even worse, now, she realised that the other woman’s apparent fondness for her was probably nothing but the same old desire to fix smart little weirdo Holtzmann. It seemed that brilliantly clever and successful female scientists couldn’t resist doing a bit of charity work on the side. And there Holtzmann had been like an idiot, the charity case, thinking she had finally made a friend who really just liked her as she was.

That was a hard pill to swallow.

There were a few minutes left of break, but she didn’t want to stay anymore. Almost certainly overreacting, but too upset to care. Not much got to Holtzmann, but this had. It was a raw spot that had not yet healed and she wasn’t ready for this discussion. Erin had been a much needed distraction, and that had now been ruined. Reality had finally caught up with the janitor.

“I’m out,” she muttered, ignoring the teacher’s softly pleading apologies and request for her to wait, “just forget it. I don’t need this bullshit.”


End file.
